Note 452 — Chapter III · THE OLD AUTHORS.

Even in Petrarch the consciousness of this superiority of Italians over Greeks is often to be noticed: Epp. Fam. lib. i. ep. 3; Epp. Sen. lib. xii. ep. 2; he praises the Greeks reluctantly: Carmina, lib. iii. 30 (ed. Rossetti, vol. ii. p. 342). A century later, Æneas Sylvius writes (Comm. to Panormita, ‘De Dictis et Factis Alfonsi,’ Append.): ‘Alfonsus tanto est Socrate major quanto gravior Romanus homo quam Græcus putatur.’ In accordance with this feeling the study of Greek was thought little of. From a document made use of below, written about 1460, it appears that Porcellio and Tomaso Seneca tried to resist the rising influence of Greek. Similarly, Paolo Cortese (1490) was averse to Greek, lest the hitherto exclusive authority of Latin should be impaired, De Hominibus Doctis, p. 20. For Greek studies in Italy, see esp. the learned work of Favre, Mélanges d’Hist. Liter. i. passim.